


We Couldn't Bring the Columns Down

by igrab



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-13
Updated: 2014-11-13
Packaged: 2018-02-25 06:56:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2612456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/igrab/pseuds/igrab
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He wanted to be the only thing in the universe Percy could possibly think about - the way that Percy already was, for him.</p><p>But this, he learns, is not what love means.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Couldn't Bring the Columns Down

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Samson](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1025517) by [igrab](https://archiveofourown.org/users/igrab/pseuds/igrab). 



> well here's the rebirth version of Samson. widely considered by me and.... me to be The Percy/Nico Fic. so, this here is why that is true, but also why it isn't right.
> 
> whatever just read it I'll fix this dumb note when I get home

_You are my sweetest downfall  
I loved you first  
I loved you first_

Percy has taught Nico a lot of things, but one of them, Nico thinks, is that he's not a hero.

Percy is. Percy tries to deny it, to laugh it off, to say that all he wants is a normal life in new Rome with a picket fence and Annabeth and 1.5 children, but Nico knows better. He is made of destiny and star stuff, and that, he thinks, is also why Nico doesn't love him. Not anymore.

Once upon a time, Nico had thought he knew, viscerally, what love meant. He felt it watching Percy brushing off immortality; hearing about the way he and Annabeth kissed underwater; seeing them being disgustingly cute and ripping his heart out and all he'd thought was, Percy doesn't know love. Not like I do. He doesn't know what it's like to love with your whole body and soul and something black and fierce and heavy in your chest. He doesn't know what it means. Nico didn't want Percy's puppy crush, he wanted the _all_ and the _everything_ and the _forever_. He wanted to be the only thing in the universe Percy could possibly think about - the way that Percy already was, for him.

But this, he learns, is not what love means.

 

_Your hair was long when we first met_

Will Solace can see the way love hangs like a dead weight on Nico di Angelo's shoulders. He can see it in the clawing pain it brings him, the way his eyes never stray far from the epicenter of Percy's face; the way he shrugs off other people because he can't, he only has room for one in his heart and that place is already occupied.

Will knows what happened. He's been told. He remembers, too, the way his dad's car crashed into the lake and he remembers the boy with empty eyes, a Mythomagic figurine clutched in his small hands. He remembers the girl, pushing him away whenever he tried to get close to her. He remembers the girl, leaving him behind.

Will remembers, but he's pretty sure that Nico doesn't, that when Percy and Bianca had first left, it was Will Solace, Connor Stoll, and Katie Gardner who had taken care of him. Who had played with him and taught him about demigods and made sure he ate. Will remembers, even then, being worried, that they would blink one day and this tiny slip of a boy would be gone forever, and only they would mourn.

It's been two years, though, and Will has had to count them in the lives of his brothers. Lee, who'd taught Will how to string a bow and compensate for wind resistance. Mike, who'd been even worse than Will at singing, but hell if that boy couldn't rap. He's never going to sit out back with them and watch Lee air-drumming with a pair of arrows, feel his heart soar when Mike picks Kayla up on his shoulders and tries to figure out what her name could possibly rhyme with. These are the ways that Will counts the passage of time, and he does his best, but not even the boy with the healing touch can mend the jagged grief of loss.

That's not to say he doesn't try.

After the Battle for Olympus, he loses track of days, nights, all he does is give and give and give and everyone is still hurting, but because of him, they don't break. He lays his hands on the boy that came wearing a too-big helm, to save the life of the boy who could barely remember he existed. As Will does, when he closes his eyes and pours out the last of his strength into Nico's thin, thin chest, willing his heart to keep on beating.

He collapses after that, thinking only that he's as stupid as Nico is, which is why he understands that Nico can't just let it go.

 

_Beneath the sheets of paper lies my truth  
I have to go  
I have to go_

After Percy's time in the Underworld, though, Nico can tell there's something different. It takes him a near-suicidal flight across the continents, it takes him making a... _friend_ (what) and hearing Will Solace, _Will Solace_ of all people, sticking up for him.

Telling him, in no uncertain terms, to _stay_.

Percy knows what love is, now, but as it turns out, Nico's finding that he's the one who no longer has any idea what it means.

There was a big black thing in his heart and it's not gone - darkness like that is never truly gone, but he's able to look it in the eye and tell it to go away. He's able to say, _the boy who lost his sister and fell in love with a legend, he's still a part of me. But if I want to, I can choose to be more._

If he isn't his sadness and isn't his obsession with Percy Jackson, what is he?

And for the first time, he doesn't think 'what's left', but rather, ' _what do I want to be_ '?

 

_Samson came to my bed  
Told me that my hair was red  
Told me I was beautiful and came into my bed_

Some people (Travis, mostly) have told him that this is a bad idea. How could he believe him, saying that he's over Percy Jackson? How can he...

Will shrugs and doesn't let it bother him, because Travis doesn't see Nico like Will sees him.

Once upon a time, he'd been nothing but drowning, drowning in love, in loss, in panic, in the feeling of not belonging and not believing himself worthy of it. Now, Will sees _Nico_ , and Nico - for the first time in a history that only one of them has ever noticed before - Nico is looking back.

What Will falls in love with isn't the lost boy with the dead sister, it isn't the broody goth kid in the corner with a sorrow too close and tangible to go near. What Will falls for, now, is this: the boy who tells the legend that legendary isn't all that crushworthy. The boy who gripes about being fussed over, but lets Will do it anyway, a smile hiding shyly in the corners of his eyes. The boy who complains about the God of Death and his terrible sense of humor, the boy who redecorates his cabin every time he feels contrary, the boy who smiles and glares and laughs and sighs and gets this look in his eyes, a heated look, when Will talks about the bones in his face.

The boy Will falls in love with is strange, sarcastic, witty, and dark - but he is not lost, he is not broken. He is not the boy that Will saved on a battlefield all of one year ago. That boy had needed saving, and Will had healed his body but he couldn't heal his soul, even if he very much might have wanted to, at one time.

No, the boy Will loves is a boy that saved himself.

 

_Oh I cut his hair myself one night  
A pair of dull scissors in the yellow light_

"I don't want to be a hero," Nico murmurs into the darkness.

Beside him, Will shifts, turns until he can wrap an arm around his side. Sneaky midnight cuddles are definitely his favorite use of shadow travel, these days. "Yeah?"

He doesn't say, _you already are_ , or _you're my hero_ , or any number of cliché's that may or may not have been true. What Will does, instead, is _listen_ to him, listen to the words and what he's saying and what he actually means.

"If I've saved the world, I want it to be an accident," he says. "I don't want to be the one that has to make that choice - to sacrifice my happiness for." _Someone else's_ , he thinks, and it hits him, then, it hits him how much he's done exactly that, over and over and over, and how _awful_ it made him feel.

Nico swallows. "I used to want to be the only thing in the universe someone could possibly think about," he whispers, his voice hushed and vulnerable, a confession. "I don't - I don't think I want that anymore."

Will Solace moves closer, tucks his beautiful face into the crook of Nico's neck, the cold tip of his nose and the warmth in his cheeks both familiar and thrilling and so intimate Nico can hardly stand it. "I certainly wouldn't," he mumbles. "And I should know - I've seen it. I've seen the way you look when you've put everything you have into someone else, and you left nothing for _yourself_ , Nee. That's what hurt, I think. Because I did love you a little, and if you love someone, you don't want them to give away everything they have. You want them to be happy, and safe, and most importantly to love themselves, because." He trails off, but Nico picks up before he can finish it.

"Because it hurts, seeing someone you love treating themselves like they don't matter. And if you... _obsess_ like that, if you. Give it all up... there's nothing left. There's nothing left over to be."

Will sighs, hugging Nico close and tight in the warm comfort of night. "Well, you're definitely not the only thing in the universe I could possibly think about," he says dryly, and Nico laughs, turning to press his face into Will's hair.

"But heroes do that. Not with each other - with the world. There's no end to evil, to chaos, but people are finite and - that's not," and he stumbles, his words tripping over one another, but Will just waits patiently. Nico takes a deep breath and lets it out slow, then tries again.

"I want to choose my life. I don't want the _all_ and the _everything_ , I want a life that's _mine_. And I want the freedom to choose that, to choose being _with_ someone rather than knowing I need to sacrifice myself for their sake of their continued existence. I'd rather," and his ribs are creaking, that's how tightly Will's hugging him, but he doesn't care, or he does, it just feels good and right and steady. "I'd rather die next to you, without ceremony, without triumph, than save the world and have to do it alone. Because that's not what _I want_ ," and his voice, too, is shaking, he's just shaking and shaking and remembering six days of darkness and a sleep like death and the horrible, nauseating thought - _I've done all this and he still won't know, won't care, and it won't matter_ , and, _I don't want to be important enough to be loved_. 

"Love," Will whispers, and his hand comes up to cradle the back of Nico's head. "Love. There are plenty of other heroes out there, people who want glory, who want their names to last, and that's fine. Good for them. It's okay to just want to be happy. To wake up every morning knowing there's someone who will always be on your side."

Nico laughs, and it's a fragile thing, weak and uncertain. "I don't want a happy ending," he says, with another helpless little laugh. "I don't. I don't care how it ends, as long as the rest of it is good. Life isn't a story," he adds, and Will hums in agreement.

"If life were a story, the best ones would be boring."

 

_Samson went back to bed  
Not much hair left on his head  
Ate a slice of wonderbread and went right back to bed_

In another world, maybe Percy would have wanted this, too, he thinks. It's a selfish thought, one from the tiny corner of his heart where he still wonders if it would be worth it, to be loved by a legend.

Then he looks up and it's Will he sees, and he knows - he would have had some of Percy, but not all of him. Not the parts made of destiny and star stuff. Will Solace is his own person, to be sure, but in a way that makes him uniquely Nico's. Because they are just people, standing together, counting the days until the sky falls - in happiness, in contentment, in day after day after boring, wonderful day. They'll go home and fight over the covers and kiss each other goodnight, and no one will be anyone else's hero, and that, Nico thinks, is all right.

 

_Oh, we couldn't bring the columns down  
Yeah we couldn't destroy a single one  
And history books forgot about us  
And the bible didn't mention us  
The bible didn't mention us  
Not even once_


End file.
